Thursday, September 3, 2015

Best of the Web Award: Louisville Metro Government's new Drupal Site

Fig Leaf Software develops award-winning Drupal websites

Louisville Metro Government received a Best of the Web (BOW) Award from the Center for Digital Government which also promotes and announces the Digital Government Achievement Awards annually.

"In its 20th year, the annual Best of the Web (BOW) awards recognize city, county and state governments for outstanding portals and websites based on innovation, functionality, productivity and performance. This year’s first-place BOW winners are the City of Independence, Missouri; Sacramento County, California; and the State of Arkansas in the state category, a first-place winner also in 2011." ~ According to the organization's website.

Louisville Metro Government received 2nd place in the City Portal Category: 2015 Best of the Web Award.

The award-winning site was implemented in the Drupal Content Management System (CMS) by Fig Leaf Software. Louisville contracted Fig Leaf Software to implement a new responsive design for the the public website and to implement the Drupal CMS on the Acquia platform. In addition to theming the design in Drupal, the Fig Leaf team also helped improve the user experience, and design a content strategy and migration plan.

With the revamp of Louisville’s website and streamlining of content, the city is better prepared to serve its constituents. Since Fig Leaf implemented the design theme in Drupal, non-technical staff members are now able to quickly and easily manage and maintain site content based on their role. Visitors ability to perform self service tasks has been greatly enhanced.

Following the initial public website launch (www.louisvilleky.gov), the Fig Leaf team embarked on the second phase of the launch, a user-based My Louisville tool. The My Louisville custom toolbox experience will enable users to isolate and save the most important items on the site depending on their location and role.

If a user needs to locate the closest fire or police department to their home or find out who the council members are for their district, MyLouisville will be able to provide that information very quickly. This toolbox will allow citizens to more easily interact with with the city of Louisville, and will be launched in the next few months.

Fig Leaf partnered with the City of Louisville Kentucky, to redesign and relaunch the website on the Drupal 7 platform. The design is fully-responsive and was based on a series of mock-ups the city created as a starting point. Fig Leaf’s design team and the Louisville Metro Government key stakeholders worked iteratively to improve the visual treatments with an emphasis on usability and a clean look and feel.

Fig Leaf’s team closely collaborated with the city’s in-house technology team, to identify the best possible modules combined with minimal-but-powerful custom code to meet the needs of Louisville Metro Government visitors. The site required easily discoverable information for diverse audiences, a robust user engagement approach and cost-effective maintainability which could be expanded by the City’s in-house technologist. Fig Leaf also created a new Drupal module for publicity-photo management which will be shared with the Drupal community.